The amount of information circulating on networks significantly increases with the magnification of multimedia services due to Internet and the like, and hence traffic traveling across information communication networks greatly increases.
If the traffic increases, the number of simultaneously arriving packets increases, for example, in a router included in a network, and hence the number of buffering of packets increases or a load on the control of route calculation based on a routing table increases.
Therefore, memory devices such as a large capacity memory used for a packet buffer and a high-speed memory used for route calculation, which require a measurable amount of power, have been disposed in the router.
In recent years, while demand for the construction of a low power network is great, as described above, in particular, the power consumption of routers greatly influences the power consumption of an entire network, and to what extent the power consumption of routers can be reduced may be the key to the saving of the electric power of networks.
As a technique of the related art, Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2001-217870 proposes a technique in which an adequate network is selected on the basis of static and dynamic pieces of information relating to a plurality of networks. In addition, Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2007-142609 proposes a technique in which, when path route setting is performed, the route setting for a path is performed using an evaluation function in which the number of paths expected to pass through a corresponding link is used as a parameter. Furthermore, Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 9-149038 proposes a technique in which the shortage of band is eliminated by virtually performing band allocation on the basis of desired-band information written into a packet. Furthermore, PCT Application Publication WO2006/055716 proposes a technique in which individual nodes communicate the information of a best possible adjacent node with one another, and a communication path directed to a core is created using the information of the best possible adjacent node as information used for approaching a network core.